


I want to be with those who know secret things (or else alone)

by asuralucier



Series: The Book of Hours [3]
Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Charles Dickens - Freeform, Earn Your Happy Ending, Emotionally unavailable!John, Ex hitman!John Wick, Ex hooker!John Wick, F/M, Grief and Trauma, Guilt, Hegemony, Infidelity, John vs normal life normal life wins, London, M/M, Pining, Suicidal Ideation, Unhealthy marriage, Winston makes everything better, bad pain management, but he is not good at feelings either, does not take into account JW3, non explicit caning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 04:31:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19738372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: Jonathan Anderson is not a well person.Turns out, when you’ve been a hooker and forcibly retired as one of the most dangerous hitmen in the world, there isn’t a lot of truth left to tell.(Or, John finds his way back in part three of what's turned into a hooker!AU with very little hooking. Please find partsoneandtwohere.)





	I want to be with those who know secret things (or else alone)

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, thanks to flowerdeluce for being the best cheer reader ever! Thanks for putting up with my crazy and obsession with Keanu Reeves.

Jonathan Anderson lives like an invisible man in Covent Garden, afraid to be seen. He outright owns his two bedroom flat near where Charles Dickens used to drink. He is American, but his accent sometimes wanders continents. 

Near where Jonathan Anderson lives, there is an office block. A Dr. Helen Gilbert works in one of the offices as a psychiatrist. Jonathan Anderson sees her on Thursday afternoons from two to three o’clock. He’s told her once that it’s the highlight of his week, seeing her. It’s not something she’d said to him, but his compliment had been inappropriate, and also intensely flattering.

Jonathan Anderson is not a well person. He keeps asking her for stronger sleeping tablets because the ones she gives him don’t work. He admits that he has not been sleeping well for some time, ever since he’s moved to London. 

“Short of giving you enough drugs to tranquilize a horse, I don’t know what else I can give you,” Helen sighs. She has his medical history in front of her. Suspiciously thin and there are holes everywhere. Helen isn’t stupid. She can’t even be sure that Jonathan Anderson is telling the truth about his blood type (AB positive). 

He looks at her evenly, splaying his big-knuckled hands across his knees, “Probably should have gone somewhere warmer. With sun.” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“Benidorm is nearby.” Jonathan Anderson shrugs. “It’s warm there. Maybe I’ll bone up on my Spanish.” 

“That’s not an answer to my question, Mr. Anderson.” 

The receptionists make fun of Helen. They say she’s got a thing. An ethical violations-shaped thing that the board would pounce on in an instant. Helen denies this. She insists that Jonathan Anderson is medically interesting and easy on the eyes. Okay, so she thinks him handsome; (there’s something about a guy who takes care of his beard). She has never seen him in anything without a collar.

But that’s not a bad thing. 

One year and a half after becoming a patient of Dr. Helen Gilbert, John (wearing the face of Jonathan Anderson) asks his psychiatrist if she’d like to have dinner. He has been thinking about it for a while, and concludes that it’s not altogether a terrible idea. 

It’s a chance for a fresh start. 

She tells him no.

“Or are you attached? Married? Seeing someone?” These are possibilities John only belatedly considers. It’s not something that he thinks about or cares about. However, Dr. Helen is the most normal person he knows in London, or indeed, in the world and she looks like that she’d care about these social conventions. 

“I don’t date my patients,” Helen says. “Which is not to say I’m not flattered.” 

“I don’t have to keep on seeing you as my doctor,” John points out. “I’ll find another shrink who will prescribe me horse tranquilizers. Kind of been meaning to do that anyway. No offense.” 

“I’m worried about you, Mr. Anderson.” Helen looks at him. She steps up to him and the way she keeps staring at his nose makes John want to go cross-eyed. 

“If you worry about me in a non-professional capacity,” John says. “You can worry about me all the time. And you don’t have to keep calling me Mr. Anderson. John will do.” 

“John.” Helen nods, testing it out. “Okay, John, I’ll have dinner with you.” 

John makes a reservation at a restaurant.The person who takes his call has the slightest hint of an Italian accent and asks him questions like if he would like a table by the window or near the toilet, and about any dietary requirements. John keeps waiting for the guy to ask him if he needs extra plastic wrap or if the van needs to be a big one. 

He goes to pick up Helen after she gets off at work and because he has time to kill, he goes and buys some flowers. 

Helen is dressed for work, but she is wearing more makeup. She’s taken the time to do up her hair, which brightens her whole face. John thinks her new hairdo takes away from a certain severity that she keeps up at the office. “Sorry I’m late,” she says. “You look nice.” 

“So do you,” John says. “And don’t worry about it. I’ve got time.” 

Helen likes her flowers. She tells him that she’s gone on a lot of first dates and nobody’s ever bought her flowers before. 

“I’m a bit of a traditionalist. I like things done right.” John hurts from memory. “Our reservation isn’t until eight.” 

“I seem to have hit the jackpot,” Helen laughs; she tucks her hand into the crook of John’s arm. “Flowers and and a reservation. Where’d you come from?” 

“Nowhere.” John doesn’t look at her. He suggests they get a drink. 

John takes Helen to the Lamb and Flag, which is tucked behind an alleyway and to get to the front door of the pub, they have to duck through a concrete sliver. As it is a weekday, it’s not too busy and they are able to get a table in the corner. 

“I’ve been here once,” Helen says, looking around; John can’t tell if she’s impressed or not. “It’s full of tourists. I can’t believe you like this place.” 

John shrugs. “I like it when people don’t notice me. And Dickens wrote a lot about disenfranchised orphans.” That’s two truths in a row, and John doesn’t burst into flames. So far, so good. 

Helen considers this. “Isn’t the point of a date, for someone to notice you?” 

“Not someone,” John says. “Just you.” 

She flushes, and he tells himself he must be doing something right. 

This is, surprisingly and not so much, something that John is good at. He’s good at drawing people in, knowing that he will fuck them later. Normal people don’t stand a chance. And Helen is _wonderfully_ normal. Normal enough so that she won’t notice that he’s playing a game and playing a role. A role of a man who he desperately wants to be. 

Helen Gilbert can be that person to help him. Helen can tell him what to do. 

“You don’t drink?” Helen ventures, gesturing at John’s glass of tonic. 

“Not often,” he hedges. This is a lie: John drinks alone, at night, for some reprieve, to chase away ghosts and demons and the dead. To dampen the reproach of a English accent which he still hears and strains for in these narrow streets --

 _Jonathan, you’re no fool. Don’t start acting like one_. 

John doesn’t want to show Helen that part of himself. John adds, “I smoke cigarettes. Do you mind?”

“A little,” Helen says. “But I smoke now and then. I guess that makes me a hypocrite.” 

They have dinner, and no one dies. They share dessert, half a tiramisu each. And then they go for a walk and John lights a cigarette. The truth is, he smokes as a compulsion, as a memory, and he hates it but he can’t stop. 

“You might be a rebound.” Helen admits to him once he’s walked her to Charing Cross station. She lives in Mottingham, about half an hour by train. John thinks about seeing her home, but decides that would be presumptuous.

“A rebound,” John says. “What’s that?” 

Helen just stares. “You’re kidding.” 

_I am really not. I am liked by a lot of people. I was liked by a lot of people. I have fucked a lot of people. A lot of people want me dead. I have been paid to do unspeakable things. I am loyal to the man named after wine and a day of the week and I._

John exhales, “...I don’t date much. Not exactly up on the terminology.” 

“By choice?” 

“Kind of.” John shrugs. “I traveled a lot while I was working. I didn’t like to be attached to people. I guess you could say, my life has changed now. I want to change my life.” 

Helen thinks. They’ve not let go of each other’s hands for nearly an hour. She lets go of him now and stuffs her hands into her pockets. “As your psychiatrist -- former psychiatrist -- I did get some insight into your problems. Not a lot.” 

“Sorry.” 

“...But enough for me to see that I need to tell you something about me, too.” Helen bites at her bottom lip, “I’ve been engaged three times. And unlike you I dated a lot and probably have what could be considered residual trust issues. I have more problems, but these are the immediate ones you need to know about if you want to date.” 

Helen is so _human_ , it fucking hurts. 

John leans in and kisses her. He forgives her. He will take all of her flaws and swallow them up in his own darkness. “I don’t mind. I like a challenge.” 

For the next ten months, John is reasonably happy. But there are challenges he doesn’t anticipate. Societal conventions, belying the underbelly of human darkness, constrict around him everywhere. 

The first time he and Helen have sex is a literal disaster. He chokes her when she tries to suck him off, though not on purpose. But John tries to make up for it, he is quite happy to lick her cunt until she mews and claws at his hair and the back of his neck and then it’s like things are familiar again. 

When he tries to fuck her, that doesn’t go well, either. John’s mind desperately _wants_ to. He wants to; he wants to change, but Helen’s eyes are too honest and pretty and earnest and he’s never missed dishonesty so much in his life. 

Possibly, John also misses cock, but he is determined not to bring that into the equation. 

“Fuck,” John says. He’s frustrated; turning away from Helen and sitting up with his feet slung over the side of the bed onto the floor. 

“John,” Helen touches his shoulder. “Look at me. It’s okay.” 

“It’s not.” 

He feels her getting out of the bed, and Helen circles around so that they’re face-to-face. John touches her throat and feels genuinely awful. 

“We just have to get used to each other,” Helen says softly. “But I’m going to get dressed now, okay? Can I have one of your cigarettes?” 

“You know where they are,” John says and he closes his eyes until he hears Helen close the door behind her. 

John is not, as it turns out, entirely suited to monogamy, but the fact that he isn’t strictly faithful to Helen in the flesh means that he is able to treat her better. It’s what he wants to do. Jonathan Anderson is a kind man who is confused, sexually inept due to inexperience, and he wants and wants. He has to figure out these tangles by himself; it seems stupid to bother Helen with these problems. 

John Wick is a man who is less kind. He has made his life on the backs of men, bones, flesh. He knows what he wants exactly, but he doesn’t have the means of achieving any of these desires now, in his current state, and that is frustrating. 

He tells Helen that he has a new therapist. Helen is happy for him, and doesn’t ask any pressing questions. He’s always known she wouldn’t, and that makes him feel worse, in some ways.

John’s therapist isn’t so much a therapist as so much a twenty-five-year-old grad student named Jade, who is, in a word, poor as fuck and moonlights as a dominatrix in her spare time. She is barely five feet tall and wears a nose ring. 

Jade charges John about a thousand pounds per afternoon. Once for shits and giggles, John pays her fares for a conference once in Belfast. Something about negotiating sexual boundaries and conflicts’ resolution.

John does not understand university. 

Jade studies feminist theory and before she makes John bend over her kitchen counter and thwacks him with a cane (never more than ten lashes at once), they have a cup of coffee and discuss why these sessions are the way they are. There’s generally a lot about things about self-made walls; societal conventions made especially to hold up specifics of a patriarchal superstructure in which John is part. Jade never lets him forget that. 

Under Jade’s careful instruction, John reads Judith Butler and Michel Foucault and applies some ideas about performative identity and oppressive hegemony into his role of Jonathan Anderson. He is probably not doing it right.

The only thing that bothers Jade is that John refuses to discuss a safe word and apparently really doesn’t need one. He is only able to see Jade once a month because he is careful. And he doesn’t want to fall into another hole, deeper than the trap that he is already in.

“ _Everyone_ has one,” Jade says. “It’s what this is. It’s _rules_.” 

“I have rules in my other life.” John points out. “That’s my problem.” 

“Humor me and please pick a safeword, Jonathan. I don’t care if you never use it.” 

John hears that in another voice, and his response is inappropriate and automatic. A voice from a lifetime ago, mixed in with _don’t come_ and _it’s not going to be enough_ and _I had a wonderful time_. When Helen sleeps over, he doesn’t get to avail himself to various bottles he has stashed around the flat. But the pain keeps him going and his memory is vivid as ever. 

John opens his eyes, “Wednesday.” 

John meets Helen’s parents after two years of dating. It’s not been an eventful two years, but Helen is keeping up her end of the bargain. They get used to each other; she still worries about John non-professionally. They are getting better. 

Helen’s parents are American ex-pats from Scarsdale, New York living in Richmond. Her father is the director of a hospital trust and her mother is a novelist. John makes a note to buy Margaret Gilbert’s new book. John can’t tell if they like him or not; though he supposes in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. Helen has, by her own admission, being engaged three times. 

“I’m from Manhattan,” John tells the truth. There is plenty of time for lying later. “...I’ve been to Scarsdale a couple of times.” 

“I _love_ New York.” Helen squeezes John’s hand under the table. “We should go to New York.” 

“I don’t want to,” John says, too bluntly, and everything hurts. “It’s got a lot of -- horrible memories for me.” New York is still the reason he doesn’t sleep; most of the time, he manages to hide this from Helen. 

The Gilberts all look at him like normal, bewildered people, and John swallows. “I have to go.” 

John has been good. If there is anything seeing Jade once a month has taught him, it’s that pain in moderation opens his eyes and his memory. If he were still in business, working for the Tarasovs, the Albanians, the cartel, whoever, they would marvel at the sort of the man he is now. Some would no doubt opine that he has gone soft and lost his instinct and his tastes. But that’s not true. John has honed his tastes to exactly what he needs and exactly what he can get away with. 

Example: this rendition of John Wick _vis-a-vis_ Jonathan Anderson would never cause a man to need reconstructive eye socket surgery. He would never fuck Iosef Tarasov just because the boy was there and an asshole, needing a firm hand. 

This John Wick is exactly as Winston had seen him the first time: all control, all even breaths. Content, after a fashion, just waiting for his next command. 

The door to his flat jangles and John is too much John Wick so he nearly reaches for the gun stuck in his ceiling panel above his toilet. He’s down to one gun; it’s practically like he is naked. 

But then he hears Helen’s voice and remembers to breathe. 

“John? John, you in here?” 

John splashes cold water on his face and waits a long moment, “In here.”

After a moment, Helen appears in the sliver of the doorway, almost like a ghost. “For what it’s worth they like you. So you can relax now,” 

“They like me,” John says. “I ran away from dinner. They must be crazy.” 

“I told them you were nervous,” Helen says, opening the door and leans against the doorframe. “They know that you’ve had...difficult experiences.” 

“That’s one way of putting it,” John says. He crosses over and rests a hand against her cheek. “Thank you.” 

Helen kisses his palm. “They said that you’re more honest than any of my other men. I don’t know what that says about me. ‘Finally, Helen, a man who speaks his mind. Even if it isn’t what you want to hear.’ That’s what I like most about honesty.” 

That night, they make love. They make love slowly, lovingly like ordinary people. John takes care to dole out the reserve of pain that he has carefully saved on his person. He makes Helen come three times. The pain has Wednesday’s name imprinted on it, and it’s the only thing that keeps him sane. 

“I love you,” Helen murmurs into the crook of his arm after. “I love you, Jonathan Anderson.” 

“I love you back,” John says with his nose in her hair. He tells himself he means it. He has to. 

They marry. John has never thought of himself as the marrying type, but he has never thought he’d be normal, either. Excommunicated from the world of a fine hotel chain, of gold, of pain, of terrible things that used to put him to sleep like a baby. 

He buries those memories, determined to put in their place happier ones. John shaves the night before his wedding in order to make himself look younger. Helen wears an ivory cream dress with a long train made out of tulle and John makes the wedding party laugh when he deadpans, “Well, you made it, sweetheart. Fourth time lucky.” 

Margaret Gilbert whispers to her husband, “That’s going to be the title of my next book.” 

Her husband, equally deadpan: “Well, you made it, sweetheart, or fourth time lucky?” 

For their first anniversary, Helen comes back with a beagle puppy, with a silk yellow bow threaded through its collar. 

“This is Daisy,” Helen says. “Say hi.” 

John kneels and takes the dog’s paw, “Hi, Daisy.” Daisy looks at him with sad, somber eyes, as if she knows exactly who John is. 

During one of his sessions with Jade, John forgets to take off his wedding ring. It is only afterwards that she thinks to mention it. She chooses her moment precisely, like the measured strike of the cane against the skin of his ass and it stings. John doesn’t mind, all that means is that he gets a bit more pain to take away with him. 

“You’ve gotten married.” 

“So?” 

“So nothing.” Jade unties his blindfold and then she puts on the kettle. He hadn’t always worn one, but now finds he prefers it. “I should have guessed.” 

John unfolds himself from his position and stretches his arms above his head, “I don’t know what that means.” 

Jade puts down a cup of tea in front of him. She tells him it’s tea today because she’s run out of coffee grounds. “You profess to hate rules, Jonathan. And yet you pile so many of them in your life, as if you’re afraid to learn who you are without them. The only rules you choose to break are the ones which must _not_ be broken. Like the safeword malarkey.” 

Today, John is wearing a dark colored pea coat. The cut is no longer immediately fashionable or vogue but John takes good care of the coat. He shrugs it on as he gets ready to leave because fuck it. “I have a safeword now.” John still has never used it; but he thinks it, and screams it in the deep recesses of his brain, _Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday_. 

“Nice coat, by the way, Jonathan,” Jade calls after him. “Very vintage.” 

John gets home and finds Helen getting ready to take Daisy out for a walk. He offers to come with them and talks Helen out of putting Daisy on a leash. Daisy, in turn, does her part by sticking close to John’s ankles. 

“How come she never does that with me?” 

John nearly mistakes that for Helen asking him something else. But then he recovers, and smiles a bit sideways, “Maybe it’s my manly charm. Or maybe she likes my cologne better than yours.” 

Helen laughs, “Ha,” then she searches John’s face. The healing reddish stripes still adorning his ass and the back of his thighs stand to attention, “You _are_ in a good mood today.” 

“I saw my therapist,” John says. “She says I’m making a lot of progress.” 

Helen says, “I’d agree with that. Did she give you anything to work on? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m just curious.” 

In his head, John makes a new rule. It’s going to be something he sticks to from now on. “She says -- that I find retirement disorienting. I should come up with some routines. I make rules and then I don’t stick to them. No follow through.” He reaches for Helen and presses her against his side, “My new rule is that I’d like to take my wife out on dates more during weekends.” 

She smiles, turning into his coat, “I’d like that, too.” 

John sighs and drops a light kiss to the top of his wife’s head. It’s working. 

Winston is nearly five years sober from John Wick, when he gets just a taste and wakes up. Wick Anonymous, party of one. It would have been two, but Marcus is dead. 

Five years is a blink of an eye in some worlds and a lifetime in others. For the most part, the New York Continental has recovered. The Russians have even started to frequent the bar in good faith again, and things are not so much _normal_ , but simply as they should be. 

The _excommunicado_ of John Wick had, as Winston had known it would, caused quite a stir. The moment the announcement had been sent out via the mobile network, all the worms had come crawling. The hotel had filled up in a matter of days and the Continental did great business for the next six months as the city went hunting like ravenous wolves starved for days. There are a few false alarms, and of course he knows them to be false, but Winston stops breathing for every one of them. 

John Wick is never found. 

Charon speaks to him about it exactly once in absolute confidence in the penthouse, that a plane had left JFK to London Heathrow. On the flight manifest was one Mr. Jonathan Anderson.

“I’m not from London,” Winston says, stricken with a bout of sudden honesty. “Perhaps I should have been. My life would have turned out differently. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with big cities.” 

Charon regards him evenly. “Are you going to be all right, Mr. Manager?” 

“Yes, I think so. Give me some time.” 

Time is a godless balm. It closes up whatever pores in Winston’s soul that had once been teased open by the pressing heat of John’s presence. He takes the bits of himself he didn’t know he’d given away in the first place, and puts those pieces back into his own proximity. Then Winston vows never to make the same mistake again. 

But then, because Winston is only human and by his own admission prone to sentiment, he does make other mistakes. The first mistake is hiring Sylvia Haze as his head of security after Elias finally retires after working for Winston nearly twenty-five years. 

Or at least, everyone thinks Sylvia is a mistake and that Winston has made another error of judgment in the name of human affection. But after Sylvia manages to extricate three Bulgarian knuckleheads from Continental grounds and drive her stiletto through their eardrums, no one says anything else. 

Sylvia smiles at Winston. “You can thank John for that. I got the idea from the pencil.” 

“The pencil was broken, Miss Haze. Try both eardrums at once.” 

Sylvia shrugs congenially. “I’ll get there. It doesn’t matter.” 

They sit at the bar in companionable silence; there are others around but Winston’s and Sylvia’s professional relationship means that everyone gives them a wide berth. 

“I have something else for you,” Sylvia says. “Did you know I was in London?” 

Winston doesn’t look at her. “I don’t want it. Whatever it is.” 

“Then throw it away,” Sylvia says. From her purse, she extracts a thumb drive and leaves it next to her drink. “But I didn’t think that decision was mine to make, Mr. Manager.” Then Sylvia checks her mobile and waves away the bartender who has crept by to see if she wants another drink. “I’ve got to go.” 

Winston says, both to be cruel and kind, “You’re a lot like your father, Miss Haze.” 

Sylvia’s back stiffens. “I’m not. Not yet.” 

Despite Winston’s better judgement, he pours himself a generous double of whiskey and plugs the thumb drive into his laptop, which he hadn’t wanted to get but Sylvia hadn’t given him any choice. He’s alone in the penthouse, as he so often is, now. 

There are only two files of interest on the drive. The first, is a twenty-second clip seemingly taken from a camera aimed at a group of twenty-something friends who are celebrating an event in a pub; possibly one of the friends securing new employment. Winston finds he doesn’t know the pub, but then he lets his eyes wander, moving over to a shadowed figure in the corner. Winston is naturally drawn to these sorts of people. 

Yet when he looks closer, Winston comes to the realization that there are indeed other reasons too. This man is painfully familiar, and as if through sheer force of will, Winston can close his eyes and bid the man to materialize next to him on the sofa. 

The years have not been kind to John. The man is older, haggard, and Winston suspects he wears a beard to take away from some of these realities. In front of John is a glass of tonic. He doesn’t seem to be having anything else with it. It takes Winston a bit of effort to puzzle out what John is reading. He has to clean his glasses. But in the end, after playing the clip a couple of times, he finally makes out that John is reading Dickens’s _Great Expectations_.

John has changed. Winston can tell that even just by a cursory glance. 

The man would have never had the patience for Dickens before. Winston doesn’t think he has the patience for Dickens either. Near the end of the clip, as John turns a page, one of the friends laugh rather loudly and John looks up. First, he looks annoyed and then resigned and then almost indulgent. John tucks the book under his arm as he strides out of view. 

The second clip is in sharp contrast to the first. It’s a short snippet from what looks like a commissioned wedding video (not that Winston knows anything about weddings outside of the fact that one gets fantastically pissed at them). 

Winston finds himself admiring the flattering cut of John’s dinner jacket with its sharp lapels, and he thinks Quill would approve. It has been some time since he’s seen Quill, who doesn’t tailor women’s clothing. In this clip, John is clean-shaven, possibly by request or popular demand. 

“Well, you made it, sweetheart,” John says, to a woman in a voice that couldn’t be his, surely. “Fourth time lucky.” 

John has had more luck than any man has had any right to have in his lifetime. No one knows this. Everyone laughs as if John has made some sort of banal joke, the stuff of classical matrimony to be made immortal on tape. Winston hardly recognizes the man onscreen; he supposes he ought to be _proud_ of how much John has disappeared. Even to himself. After a fashion, John _dechiravit_. 

It actually makes Winston slightly ill. He doesn’t make it through the rest of the clip and rings for Charon, who looks like he is in the middle of something more important than Winston’s very secret, wayward indulgence. They regard each other, for a moment that is more telling than anything else that Winston might have said. 

“Have this destroyed,” Winston says. 

“Destroyed,” Charon weighs the drive in his hand. 

“Did I stutter?” Winston snaps and then regrets it immensely and immediately. “I apologize. I should probably retire.” 

“Please let me know if you need anything else,” Charon says and walks out, as if Winston hasn’t just insulted him.

There is no accounting for normalcy. People don’t tell you how to be fucking normal because they assume you must know it already. 

John has had two goes at a profession in his lifetime. Neither have taught him very much about how to be a functional human being. Looking back at what passes as his _curriculum vitae_ (he only knows what that is because Jade is putting one together for a job at the GCHQ, she is nearing the end of her degree) -- John decides that he prefers hooking and probably shouldn’t have killed that fucking Russian. 

After their last session, John offers to take Jade out to dinner and he brings Helen. Because he is suicidal. And because he doesn’t want to have any secrets from his wife. The dinner is enough of an occasion that Helen goes and gets her hair done and Jade shows up _sans_ her nose ring. 

“I didn’t know his therapist was so,” Helen searches for a word, “young.” 

But Jade behaves perfectly. She makes up completely believable stories about John needing alternative interactions with so-called figures of authority and they’ve worked through a lot, precisely because Jade doesn’t fit the bill afforded by conventional authority. 

When Helen goes to the ladies’, Jade fixes John with a look. “Are you turned on by this?” 

“No,” John says truthfully. “I’m terrified and I want to die. Are you sure you have to go work for GCHQ?” 

Jade sucks at the dregs of her gin and tonic, “I can still give you a referral, I have a friend. You’d like her. She’s mousy. You could snap her neck with two fingers. She’s the safest place you could be.”

“Do you think she’s going to fix me?” 

“No one can fix you, Jonathan. All we can do is keep your head above water,” Jade says. “For what it’s worth, I’ll miss you.” 

_Tu me manques_ , John thinks, and has to gulp a large swallow of wine. “You don’t know anything about me. There’s nothing to miss.” 

Helen does not ever find out about Jade not being her husband’s therapist. 

What she does find is John’s whiskey, John’s gun, John’s vodka, John’s bourbon, John’s very illegal tranquilizers that he really shouldn’t be using between shots but so far he hasn’t died. It isn’t that she’d been snooping through his things; it’s that they have gotten used to each other and that John has been laboring under the delusion that he is getting better. 

Clearly, he isn’t. 

John comes back to the flat one day to find all of his transgressions spread out all over the coffee table in the living room. He has never seen Helen so _angry_. There’s a part of John that is vaguely turned on by the familiarity of anger and what it must mean, but then he tells himself that isn’t appropriate. John holds very still as Helen vibrates next to his things. She really lets him have it. “Why the fuck do you have a gun? And have you been _drinking_? Who are you?” 

John lets out a breath, “I don’t know.” That’s not the answer Helen deserves. She deserves a lot more than John can give. Helen sinks down onto the couch and buries her face in her hands. Daisy hops up next to her on the couch and tries to burrow her head into Helen’s lap. 

“I don’t _know_ ,” Helen repeats, every syllable pounds into his ribcage like a nail. “Fuck’s sake, John.” 

“Pretty much,” John agrees. “You did know that I was...you knew there were things that I couldn’t tell you, Helen. Like I -- like the fact that I killed a man. He left a daughter. There. Now you know everything about me.” 

“Really? What was his name?” 

John thinks. It’s doubtful that Helen has any connections to that world. She’s since moved into John’s flat to avoid the train and just walks to work. The London Continental is but three miles away from John’s building and there’s something to be said about John being compelled to live life near the brink of death. John’s life has always been distinctly parallel to its end. 

“...Marcus Haze.” He’s not said the name in years. It still tastes the same, bitter and guilty. 

“Okay,” Helen lets out a breath. “What else?” 

“What...else.” 

She holds. “What else?” 

“I used to,” John starts and stops. He kneels in front of Helen and grips her ankles. 

“John, you’re hurting me.” 

John relaxes his hold and exhales, “Please don’t make me do this.” 

“Spousal privilege; medical privilege,” Helen smiles wanly and without any humor. “I think we’re covered. I can keep your secrets, John. If you keep them all inside of you, you’re nothing but poison inside. Is that who you want to be?” 

“I don’t want to tell you.” John says and the back of his eyes grow very hot. “Please don’t make me.” 

“Okay then,” Helen stands. Daisy yelps from the sudden upset. “I’m leaving.” 

It takes her less than fifteen minutes to pack a bag. John wonders if her efficiency has anything to do with the fact that this eventuality has been creeping at the back of Helen’s head for a very long time. He doesn’t dare ask. 

“Daisy,” Helen calls from the front door, “Come.” 

Daisy looks at John practically curled up on the floor. She nudges him near his elbow. When he doesn’t move, he hears her pad away after a minute or two. 

Then the door closes. John slowly unfolds himself and reaches for the bottle of whiskey. He holds a bitter mouthful on his tongue and then swallows a couple of tablets. 

John Wick, better known as the Baba Yaga, is seen armed, outside of the London Continental and the whole of Bakerloo line closes down; the whole of Westminster is in chaos. Both the PM and the Queen have been evacuated to Sandringham from Downing Street and Buckingham Palace respectively. It’s too early to tell what this is, news outlets buzz, but it’s probably a terrorist attack. 

This news comes to Winston when at about five in the morning. He’s drowsy, half-asleep, and he thinks that Charon must be joking. 

“I don’t joke,” Charon says. “How long have you known me?” 

Winston dredges his memory. “Cairo, was it? 1996. I’m sorry. I need to wake up.”

“I’ve taken the liberty of making you some coffee, sir,” Charon is mindful and when he puts on the light on in Winston’s bedroom, it’s only a dimmed glow and not too harsh on Winston’s eyes. He reaches for his glasses. 

“Don’t call me ‘sir,’ you’re in my bedroom.” Winston dislikes the implications. Not least of all that it reminds him of how alone he is. 

“If you’d like,” Charon assents. He hands Winston his coffee and retreats a respectful distance. “The _excommunicado_ order on Mr. Wick is still in effect. Which is probably what all the excitement is about. It is a double figure bounty.” 

“I know that,” Winston says. “Which means I cannot and will not do anything in my capacity as the Manager of the Continental.” He should be offended that Charon thinks that he needs the reminder, but maybe he does. 

“He’s going to raze the city,” Charon says. “It’s a shame. I have been meaning to visit the British Museum.” 

“I can’t _do_ anything about that,” Winston returns flatly. “Isn’t Miss Haze in London?” 

“Paris,” Charon says. 

“Practically next door,” Winston nods. “That’s fine. Tell her to stay away from this whole mess.” 

John is, he thinks, glad to do things not by halves anymore. He doesn’t just have to take pain and store it up. He gets to give, too. It’s good to have the familiar rush of adrenaline make his bones hollow and inhuman. But John has learned. He shoots to kill, quick and efficient. When possible, he tries not to leave a mess.

(That’s still not his top priority, but at least he is trying now.) 

No longer is John Wick an apex predator who plays with his food to prove a fucking point. No more pencils; no more forks; just clear and concise bullets like the old tradition dictates. 

For some reprieve, John ducks into an off-license and grabs iodine, gauze and a chocolate bar and ducks in the toilet in the back. He’s got a few grazed wounds that he’d like to take care of sooner rather than later. John chews chocolate and his pills and presses a piece of bloodied gauze into a wound near his elbow after applying a few drops of iodine. On a second thought, maybe the iodine is unnecessary because of all the whiskey still flowing through his veins. 

The door to the toilet busts open and John reacts, lightning quick. He presses the barrel of his gun into someone’s temple and then freezes. 

“You’re a fucking idiot,” says Sylvia Haze. 

She’s grown up. Her girlish face, only straining towards womanhood the last time John had seen her, has become shapely and sharp and she still has her father’s eyes. It’s the eyes; they’re not unlike a punch to the gut, “He said that to me once.” John says, without breathing. 

“You guys destroyed a national park in Patagonia,” Sylvia snorts. “What else was he going to say to you?” 

“What are you doing here?” John swallows. He suddenly needs to sit down and slumps on top of the toilet. He rips more of the chocolate and chews. 

“Do you have it?” 

“Have what?” John blinks. 

“Winston’s Marker.” Sylvia looks at him as if he is stupid. “Call it in.” 

As if on some sort of autopilot, John reaches inside of his peacoat and extracts a small black box from the pocket in the lining, where it has had pride of place when not at the dry cleaner’s. He holds it in his hands and can’t bear to give it to her. “ -- I can’t.”

Sylvia doesn’t look amused, “You could have thought about that before your antics had the Queen evacuated. Everyone’s out to get you. Do you want to die, John, in a bathroom bleeding out in someone’s shit?” 

John shrugs, “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” 

“And Dad wasn’t supposed to _die_.” Sylvia flares and all that fills John’s vision is the face of a dead man. 

John turns the gun around and presses the barrel into his own temple, “I want to die. Shoot me.” If the boon that comes with John’s death should go to anyone, he can’t think of anyone more deserving and appropriate than Sylvia Haze.

Instead, Sylvia pistol-whips John with the butt of the gun before he can blink. He’s dizzy and in pain, a new, clearing kind of pain that had been familiar once. Her eyes flash blue fire. “Give me the _Marker_ , John fucking Wick you fuck. Or I will shove chocolate down your windpipe.” 

Somehow, they get out of London. John doesn’t remember much of it. They end up back in Paris, where he hasn’t been in nearly twenty years. Sylvia procures keys to a rat bitten flat right above a grungy bar in the nineteenth _arrondissement_ and orders John to shower. He does, realizing there are clothes that fit him in the dingy bathroom folded up beside a clean towel, but not stuff he has worn in years, a t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. 

John walks out into the sitting room to find Sylvia on the phone, “I’m dreadfully hungover,” she announces loudly when she notices him. “The only thing I want to do is eat croissants and sleep. And watch the news. Have you seen what’s going on in London? Holy shit.” 

She listens for a moment longer and thrusts the burner at John, “I’m not kidding. I’m starving. Hold this.” 

John is left holding the burner and he thinks that all of his nerves have frozen on him. It’s a thousand years before he manages to lift the phone up to his ear. He exhales, and hears breathing at the other end. 

Someone, a man who sounds remarkably like Winston, says, “Hello, Jonathan.” 

“Jesus,” John sucks in a breath, except no air makes it into his lungs. “It’s -- you.”

“Flattery gets you nowhere,” Winston says. “It’s good to hear your voice.” 

John’s throat is still dry, “ _Tu me manques_ ; I have suffered for the lack of you,” he blurts out, the harsher syllables still scratching at the edge of his vocal chords. “I know you now. And because I know you I will never know anyone else.”

On another continent, Winston is having coffee on his balcony. Except he is markedly not alone. It’s been a dreary day so far, but the meteorological forecast predicts sun, later in the day. The brunt of John’s words have lodged themselves very dearly near Winston’s lungs. 

“John,” he says. 

“What.” 

“I declared you _excommunicado_. You saved my life, and yet I repaid you by taking everything away from you.” Though possibly, John doesn’t need reminding. That said, these words are worth saying anyway, so Winston does. He is practical in his own way. 

“You were doing your job,” John says reasonably. “And you didn’t take everything away from me. Thanks to you I was able to buy a nice flat. But I’m pretty sure it’s been blown up. And it’s -- how things go. Isn’t it? Anyway. I’ve got only the one Marker. I should probably get going before Sylvia is tempted to cash in on me. Apparently I’m expensive.” 

“...About that,” Winston reaches for his mug to find it empty, “I was just speaking to the Manager of the Continental in London. Havisham is...very unhappy about the state of his city. As you can imagine, he stands to lose a lot of business. You might have also exposed a lot of London’s erm, security flaws.”

“Security flaws,” John says. 

“It’s been an ongoing problem,” Winston acknowledges. 

John makes a noise, “Not all of it is my fault. I’ve learned restraint.” 

“I don’t know if I believe that or not.” 

“I could show you,” John suggests, seductive and low and Winston’s mouth goes dry. “Or not.” 

“The London Continental is the second oldest Continental next to New York,” Winston pushes on, determined to let the moment pass. “The Manager rung me to supplicate on your behalf. It is unusual, but he was persuasive and I’ve given it some thought.” 

“Is his name actually Havisham? That’s pretty fucking funny.” 

“It’s unfortunate, isn’t it? But the name suits him, I think.” 

A pause, John asks, “...What about the High Table?” 

“Ah, that,” Winston exhales again. “You’ve made a few friends, Lord knows. So long as you stay away from Italy, still. They’ve agreed to leave the final decision to me.” 

“And what is your decision, Mr. Manager? I’ll do whatever you want. Disappear. Fuck you. Become a waiter. Anything you want.” As if it bears repeating, as if John thinks Winston still has doubt wallowing inside him. And of course, John doesn’t say please. 

Winston is not entirely surprised when his relief turns into something warm and coiling hopefully near his groin. 

But he is silent for a moment longer, mostly in wonder that such a moment has finally come to be, “I declare John Wick’s _excommunicado_ null and void.” Winston has only just noticed that he’s been holding the same breath for years, “See you in New York.” 

“Fuck you, become a waiter,” Sylvia says with her mouth still full of pastry, “You guys are fucked up. What was that?” 

“Were you really eavesdropping on me?” John grouses. 

“This apartment is tiny, if you haven’t noticed,” Sylvia chews some more and licks her fingers. “Anyway. I am going out. There are thirty guns around, you can play with them, fine, but if you do anything stupid --” 

“You’ll shove chocolate down my throat. Yeah, I got that.” 

When John walks into the Continental in Manhattan in the middle of a sunny rare New York afternoon, the room goes silent. Maybe everyone is astounded at his _nerve_ and the fact that he isn’t ruining the Continental’s nice carpets with blood trickling from wherever. He is also wearing a new suit -- a midnight-blue double-breasted number that Quill insists is on the house because he has missed catering to John’s figure.

John still doesn’t know if that’s a come-on, but either way, it’s flattering. He hardly feels like himself.

“...Mr Wick,” Charon nods. “With all your limbs attached. Thank goodness. Would you like a room?” 

“Please,” John dips his head. 

“Would you like a view?” 

“I,” John grins, despite himself. “If there’s one going.” 

“And do you understand our rules?” Charon says. 

“I’m crystal clear about them and will put them into practice. It’s not something you have to be concerned about.” 

“Very well,” Charon slides a key card across the smooth marble of the counter. “Management insists you take this room. It’s got the best view the hotel’s got to offer. Top floor.” 

John finds Winston in his bedroom. Then he realizes he’s never been in Winston’s bedroom before. John is suddenly shy, the way he never was before, and the way he wasn’t ever with Helen or any of the tricks who have come before. It’s the kind of shyness that oddly comes to one’s person when they’ve bared their soul and are by consequence not alone. 

“John,” Winston crosses over to meet him by the door. “You shaved.” 

“I did,” John says. “But luckily I didn’t get anything else of mine chopped off. So it’s not something you have to worry about.” 

“I’m possibly more relieved about that than I should be.” Winston leans up to kiss him, taking John by surprise, but then he remembers. He remembers everything. He remembers how relieved he is, that Winston’s grip is firm and that if John shoves him, the man won’t simply break or cry out in pain. Of course, John doesn’t say anything as pastiche as “I love you,” and he doesn’t ever expect Winston to say it back.

But he sinks down to his knees and mouths against Winston’s inner thigh and leans into the grip that Winston has in his hair. He tongues the underside of Winston’s begrudging erection and the man’s cock at last jumps to true attention when John breathes moist air over it. “

...Oh good, you still like me.” John is relieved, too. 

“I have always liked you,” Winston says with his eyes shut. 

John lets go of the man with a wet pop, “Do you mean that?” 

“When have I ever said anything I don’t mean?” 

“I miss,” John starts. Then he decides that he has had enough of sap and warmth because that was the sort of thing that had imprisoned his marriage and the sad sack of man that he’d so wanted to be once, the caricature of normalcy that is -- was -- Jonathan Anderson. “I miss cock. I haven’t been with a man in years.” 

Winston just looks at him, “Surely not because no man wanted to be with you.” He presses his thumb against John’s mouth and John bites almost gently at his fingernail. 

On the other hand, Winston has gone five years without John and he hasn’t been the chastest. Not that he’d ever consider himself chaste ever. He’d stuck to the brothel in Chinatown and never saw the same sort of boy twice and never asked them their names and never gave them a name to call him except for “sir.” Every one of them did what they were told and never ventured outside of the boundary Winston set because no one wanted to die. 

John has always wanted to die. Maybe that was what made him different. 

“I never went looking. If they wanted to be with me, I missed out,” John says. “It was the only way I knew how to.” He shakes himself. “ -- Can we stop talking now? I miss cock. That was all I wanted to say.” 

So they don’t talk for a long time. 

And John doesn’t seem to be lying when he said he’d missed cock. He mounts Winston like a hungry wanting whore from a lifetime ago when he first undid Winston with “you’re a bit of a freak” and a smile that wore secret promises without telling you what they were. 

And later, with Winston’s softening cock still buried in his arse, John looks at him for any direction. Or maybe he just likes looking at Winston incidentally. 

“When can I…” 

“When I say,” Winston says, putting a hand against John fucked-red mouth. “Or when you beg. Whichever comes first. It is entirely up to you.” 

John holds out for another long, delicious five minutes, the taut muscles of his thighs straining towards a peak. Then he bends forward, pressing his face into Winston’s chest, inhales, and says, “Please, please, _fucking_ please.” And when he does come, he sighs, “Wednesday, Wednesday, fucking Wednesday.”

Like he’s come home. 

Winston licks the taste of John off his fingers and decides that that was good fun. They were going to have to do that again. 

“You’re still wearing your wedding ring,” Winston says, and John stiffens beside him on the bed. 

“Well. It’s been a long couple of days,” John says. 

“You’ve not left my bed for a week,” Winston reminds him. They are always decent when Housekeeping sends up their meals, but at some point, life has to start moving again. There hasn’t even been that much fucking. Sometimes, it’s enough to know that John is using his bed for its usual intended purpose. 

Still, Winston needs to catch up on his correspondence, while John needs to...something. It seems unkind, somehow, to unleash John Wick back into the world so briefly after he’d nearly single-handedly destroyed London. Maybe he does need more time off. 

“I meant,” John turns away from him. “Before. And you’re distracting.” 

“Much obliged,” Winston says. He drags a hand across a red mark on John’s collarbone, just one of many distractions accumulated recently. 

John sucks in a deep breath and he tosses the covers aside to rise naked. Winston hears him close the door to the toilet. When John returns, he has availed himself to one of the bathrobes in Winston’s bathroom. 

“Shy all the sudden?” 

“If you’re asking me about Helen, I’d feel more comfortable with clothes on,” John smiles at him thinly and without humor. “You try answering that question when you’re naked.” 

Winston looks down at himself, “I’m naked. You can ask me something uncomfortable.” 

“Were you ever married?” 

“No,” Winston shakes his head, “It almost never did occur to me, that kind of thing. I also don’t have any children -- at least, any that I know of; I don’t have the patience for them.”

“Did you ever thinking of whoring yourself out?” 

“Doubt I would have made any money,” Winston says. He thinks he must be telling the truth. “I’ve answered both of your questions.” 

John starts, “You’re not exactly.” Then he seems to think better of it, “Helen was. She is. I assume she’s alive somewhere.” That’s still not a complete sentence, but it’s a start. 

“You did level half of Westminster trying to kill yourself.” Winston points out, and then thinks that came out a bit insensitive. He adds, “Do you know that for certain?” 

John thinks, seems to assent to this with a mild shake of his head. “I hope Daisy is okay. I miss her, too.” 

“Daisy?” Silence is the better part of wisdom; Winston doesn’t think it would put him in good stead with John to accuse the man of bigamy. 

“My dog,” John says. He leans away from the doorframe of Winston’s bedroom and Winston hears him in the kitchen. Winston gets up after a moment, throws on some clothes and follows. 

“Anyway.” John has put a saucepan of water to boil, “You would have liked Helen. Does that sound strange?” 

“Not really.” Winston comes up behind him to peer at the pot of water. “I still reserve the right to be insulted. There are a number of ways this could go. What are you making?” 

“I saw spaghetti in your cupboard and some mince in the fridge,” John says. “I’m hungry.” 

“I think the kitchen would be insulted,” Winston tells him, but at the same time, he is intrigued by this turn of events. “I didn’t know you could cook.” 

“My wife was a working professional,” John quirks one side of his mouth, “I was retired, so I cooked. It’s not difficult; I just followed a cookbook.” 

“Who told you what to do?” Because these things are always of interest. 

John appears to be thinking, as he fetches a packet of spaghetti from Winston’s cupboard, “...Nigella Lawson?” 

“Good Lord,” Winston says, and has to take refuge in a glass of red wine. 

He pops the cork to a Barbera, which will go nice with John’s spaghetti. When Winston glances at his watch, he notes that It’s barely gone past noon, but with youthful fervor everywhere in his veins, not that John is young, Winston thinks -- fuck it. 

Not too surprisingly, Helen hadn’t liked John’s cooking, and she’d never been shy about telling him so. That could have been what Winston liked about her. That she took no shit. 

Despite Winston’s lackluster perspective on Nigella Lawson, John holds a more positive opinion. He kind of admires her ass and her simplicity. Mostly, Nigella’s recipes don’t require any work, only to boil water, chop things up, and do things to unspeakably expensive ingredients obtained from Borough Market. 

If there is anything normal that John is good at, it’s spending money. After all, he has had plenty of practice.

John is staring somberly at a frying pan of mince bubbling at the edges when Winston puts a glass of wine next to him. Because it’s habit, John reaches for pills that aren’t there. He doesn’t know where his pills are and the anxiety that usually takes hold of him is dulled and almost calming. 

“...Are you in pain?” Winston is watching him. “I could send for the doctor.” 

John stares back. “Up here, while I’m cooking you spaghetti in a bathrobe.” 

“On second thought, perhaps not.” 

John is in a mediocre amount of pain; all things considered, it’s almost nothing at all. Besides, most of that is pain which has an undisputed origin. He likes carrying around that sort of certainty on his body. John takes a sip of wine and decides that what’s in the pan can be left to simmer for a little while, but he can’t bear to look at Winston. 

After a while, John says, thinking aloud more than anything else, “For what it’s worth, Helen never told me what to do; she just -- kept waiting for me. To become better. As you can see I didn’t. But I did _try_.” He pauses and swallows, “...I outsourced that other thing. I don’t know if things would have been better or worse.” 

“Outsourced,” Winston queries with an arch of his eyebrow. 

“I hired a dominatrix and learned about the guiling nature of patriarchy,” John tells him, no fuss or feathers. He wonders if this will make Winston laugh. He wonders if he’d had the nerve to divulge his true association with Jade to Helen; if it just hadn’t been the gun and the pills and the hard liquor, if after all that his wife would have still wanted to keep his secrets. 

“That is absurd,” Winston does laugh, a warm inviting chuckle that makes John want to take him back to bed. Or no, the bed is too far away. Perhaps just the wall, the nearest flat surface; or maybe, John can convince Winston to get creative so long as they stay away from the kitchen counter on account of good hygiene. There are no rules here; it’s not as if he needs to worry.

“It was,” John says. “I was hardly myself. She -- I mean the dominatrix, not my wife -- says that’s not so unusual. Nobody sees anybody. Invisibility, the great illness for the times, and the patriarchy has it pretty bad. I’m living proof.” 

“John _dechiravit_.” Winston curves a hand around John’s cheek as if it is the most natural thing. “I see exactly who you are.”

**Author's Note:**

> And that's a wrap! Things of note if you'd be interested: 
> 
> [The Lamb and Flag](https://www.lambandflagcoventgarden.co.uk/) in Covent Garden is real and Dickens did drink there. I drink there a lot too when I'm in London. I like to think it hasn't blown up. 
> 
> Jade's approach to John is heavily inspired by [this](http://dangerouswomenproject.org/2016/11/21/3699/).
> 
> For kicks, please have Nigella's recipe for [spaghetti and meatballs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze2KzMm7xE0).
> 
> Many thanks for reading!


End file.
